"Okay." I hear her shift, settling in the way she does when she is about to say something she has thought through. "Come to Cedar Ridge."
I knew she was going to say that.
"Anna."
"Come here. Come now. Call Carmen, tell her there's a family situation, get on the next boat, and come home."
"I can't come home. I don't have a home, that's the whole problem."
"You have a home here. My home is your home, you know that, my alphas are not going to have a single issue with it, and I will have your room done up in about forty-five minutes. I timed this once. I can absolutely do it, Jen, I just need you to say yes."
And the thing is, I know she means every word. Her alphas would probably absorb me into that house without complaint. I know my sister would sit next to me on the bed and hand me tea at three in the morning and not once make me feel like a problem she was solving.
Which is exactly why I can't.
"I'm not coming empty-handed," I say.
"Jennifer."
"I need to do this first. Three months, Anna. I finish the contract, I get paid, I come to you with something. Not with nothing."
"Jennifer Marie Sullivan, you really are as stubborn as a mule."
I sit up. The room is small and warm and smells of sea air coming through the cracked window and I feel very clearly, in this moment, what I mean even if I don't quite have the words assembled yet. "If I come now, I'm running again. And I have been running since Vegas and I'm very tired of the sound of my own footsteps. I need to stand somewhere for five minutes and do something that goes right because of me. On my own." I pause. "And then I'll come. I promise I'll come. But with money and a plan and my head actually attached to my shoulders instead of tucked under my arm."
Anna is quiet.
Then she says, "You're the most stubborn person I have ever loved."
"I know."
"Don't let pride get in the way of what's right."
"I'm not. I'm letting self-respect get in the way of what's easy, which is different."
"Is it."
"Yes. Ask me again in three months when I can actually defend that argument properly."
She sighs. "Fine," she says. "But you call me, and anytime you want to come then you do it. I'll wire you the money with no questions asked. Got it."
"Gotcha."
"And you eat. Real meals. Not crackers."
"I cooked a lamb roast tonight. With tarragon sauce. From scratch."
"From my recipe?"
"Adjacent to your recipe. With improvements."
"Name one improvement."
"Bay leaf in the stock. Left it in longer than you'd recommend."
A pause. "Did it work?"
"Beautifully."